An early French settlement.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

Margaret Atwood. Canadian novelist.

We spent the morning at Port-Royal, the site of the first French settlement in Canada, in 1605. The fortified structure flourished, on farming and fur trapping, until 1613 when an English expedition from Virginia burned It to the ground.

The Canadian Government reconstructed the buildings, with great skill and accuracy in 1939-40. This is one of the rooms full of the equipment used by trappers, including a birch bark canoe, and the furs of beavers, otters, martens, raccoons, bears, wolves and coyotes. Thus was Canada built.